Hipsy's View: Blue Asylum

Iris Dunleavy has been declared insane, not only by her slave-owning husband, but by a Virginian sheriff and a doctor that's experted in "the hysteria of women". In order to be "cured" and made a proper woman and a good wife again, she is sent to the Sanibel Asylum, on an island in the Keys. Can she prove she's not a lunatic and escape the asylum where the cure for everything is in the color blue? Or will she stay trapped on an island populated by everyone that is affected by the war and some type of lunacy (including the doctor)?


I had the privilege to get to read an advance copy of this book (because it is one of my Goodreads First Reads). I found it a little hard to finish, but what kept me going were the characters' stories all broken into pieces. So whether I wanted to give up on finishing the novel or not, a part of me was dying to know more about the characters' personal histories that brought them to the island's asylum. Though the main character refused to admit to being a lunatic, she could not deny that there was something that did push her - and others- close it, especially in a time of war. If she is not crazy, then who is? Is it the superintendent that has to deal with all the patients' problems as well as his laudanum-addicted wife's and his own? Or his twelve-year-old son who has declared himself a lunatic? Or is it the Confederate solider that is haunted by a dark past he faced during the war? Perhaps they are all mad, and the best place for them all is the asylum where the color blue leads its patients back to sanity.


This story was good, and I would recommend it to anyone that is interested in the back stories you never hear mentioned during the Civil War. I would also recommend it to anyone that likes to take their time to read a story.